Billy Rae Stewart - The Latest News

Revenue streams for musicians are drastically changing. No longer do musicians make the bulk of their income from selling their music. While live shows, streaming, and merchandise sales help offset lost profits, musicians are being forced to be more and more creative when it comes to how they make money. Music licensing has always been a solid way for bands and musicians to make money, and with sites like Taxi.com or Songtradr it’s never been easier to connect musicians to people looking to licence music. Here are some of the most common types of music licensing: 1. TV shows TV shows always need tons of music.

Many productions partner with a music licensing company that will look through their own catalogue of music and send songs that they think will go well with certain scenes. Music licensing companies are looking for music that is emotionally engaging and consistent across its mood, tone, lyrical themes, and production. The songs should paint a picture for the listener. While most music licensing companies will help you negotiate a fee per song, online services will often just take a flat percentage of whatever the company pays you . . . . Read More

There are many different kinds of people that will be visiting your website, but likely for different reasons. These include your current fans, potential new fans, as well as media, bloggers, bookers, and other industry folks. For example, your fans might go to your website to read your latest blog post or download your latest song. But with media and industry, they’re probably visiting your site to find things like your official bio, or some promo photos.

To make it easy for media and industry to find the information they need (and quickly), the best thing to do is create a Digital Press Kit section on your website. [How to easily build an EPK using Bandzoogle's Preset Page Templates] What should you include in it? Here are 8 things that should be in every musician’s digital press kit:

What is key to a great music website? An engaging, easy to scan, music page, with lots of songs to listen to. It should reflect who you are as a musician, and offer lots of options for your listeners in an organized way. Remember, people are visiting your website to hear your music - so make it easy to listen to! You've set up your perfect Homepage now, and added a great band bio page - time to tackle the music page to start selling music online!

Music, and more music Make sure you have music on this page that’s easy to listen to. Add a track list, an album, or some singles and make it clear how to press play and listen, right away. While you should have your full discography available to sell online, you don’t have to stream your entire catalog. You can pick some songs to play in full, or set up preview clips. Read More . . . .

After Napster was notoriously forced to shut down in 2001, Apple saw an opportunity worth exploring. The release of the iPod and the iTunes Store in 2001, followed by the iPhone and the explosion of mobile apps in 2007, dominated much of the conversation around music technology at the time. But Pandora, launched in 2000, was simultaneously gaining traction over those same years.

The element of personalization and the excitement around algorithms was catching on — as was the freemium ad-supported model — and it paved the way for the success of newer streaming services like Spotify. Read More . . . .

If you’re passionate about singing, there are many different opportunities for you to take advantage of your skills to make some money.

Singers can make $46,000 a year on average (and up to $40 million if you’re Beyonce). Now, there is only one Queen B, but that doesn't mean that you can’t carve out a nice living for yourself as a singer.

Singers typically earn money from performances and selling merch. Here’s a look at some of the different types of job opportunities that are available to you as a singer.